Tundra Bicycling

over thanksgiving break, vicki and i decided to take our bikes our for our longest trip yet. we followed the johnson river around to nunap, hung out with carey for a little bit, then headed the direct route back. in total it was about 12 miles (i think). it wasn't too cold until the wind started blowing straight at us, making 3 degrees feel about 12 below.

about halfway, my toes were completely frozen. good thing vicki thought of toe warmers. we stopped and put those in our boots, which helped.

we followed the truck tracks that lead to

bethel. the trail was pretty smooth, not too much resistance (except the wind). the entire two hours we rode, the sun was setting behind us, coloring the tundra in pinks, purples and oranges, an esthetic distraction from the cold.

Santa Claus Comes to Town (in style)

Operation Santa Claus. Last Monday, Santa came in a black hawk with some of the National Guard. I believe the National Guard and The Salvation Army work together to make this happen. So after they asked permission to come from the village council last summer, families had to sign all their children up; that way when Santa came in November, he could bring each one a gift. So every kid, even high school boys, sat on Santa's lap and got a present. The presents were pretty nice, basketballs, board games, barbies, zip drives, and lots more. Although it caused much chaos throughout the day, it was pretty exciting. And the very first helicopter I'd ever seen!

digital storytelling

Here's a movie I made in a digital storytelling workshop.

Music: "Rise" by Eddie Vedder

my new ride

winters here can be long... from october until may, so i needed something to preoccupy me. vicki suggested getting snow bikes. after a lot of indecision on my part, i found one one on craigslist and decided to buy it.

i'm excited about it. you may not be able to tell from the picture but those tires are three or four inches wide. i've gotten some strange looks riding it around. i tried it out on the frozen river (even thought there's only about 2-3 inches of ice) thinking i'd be fine since snowmachines are riding on it. i heard a little bit of cracking, and at one point i swear i heard sloshing of water. my feet peddled like hell to get off the ice. i was fine though. i think i was overreacting in my head. people say the ice is good, so i'm going to go with that. it's gotten colder the last couple days too, so it's definitely good now.

anyway, i'm going to take this baby to the store to buy groceries, other villages to compete in women's basketball tournaments, and around the tundra for exercise and a good time. i'm stoked about this new bike. we'll see how it holds up in the snow.

speaking of favorites

one of my favorite sounds, i decided today, is the sound of a kid laughing in class when the entire room is silent with students reading independently. it makes me smile (really hard) to myself.

"How are you?"

I hate that phrase. A lot. I mean, if someone wants to honestly know, then please, by all means, ask. But if you're walking past me, it really makes no sense to ask me how I am, there's no purpose in asking. I'm further annoyed by this question because I feel that if I don't ask you back, then I'm obviously rude and self-centered, yet you're only passing by me and you clearly don't have time to listen to either my answer or answer the query yourself.

Perhaps the next time I'm asked this question, I will say I'm suffering from a terrible rash that won't stop itching. (I don't really have enough audacity to do that, but it would be quite funny. You should try it and then tell me about it.)

I should add... I'm not innocent in this either. I've definitely asked people how they were in passing, but the reason is simply I'm not sure what else to say to acknowledge them. So the remedy, I suppose, is to find something new to say in order to acknowledge people in passing... here's a start to some ideas
(well we could use the australian phrase) "Top of the morning to you" or "Top of the afternoon/evening to you"
"Hey, nice to see you"
"Mornin'. Love your outfit"
"Hey. Lovely day, eh?"

I'm having a rough time here... any other ideas?

sweet house

check out the house i'm living in for the next five weeks.

http://watershedstudio.us/project_detail.php?id=41&type=residential


it's incredible inside too!

My Co-Captain

Lola isn't a fan of road trip, of this I am sure. The only reason she made it is that if she died, she could no longer be by my side, and that's not acceptable. I know she didn't like it because she wouldn't eat the whole trip. Everytime I tried to feed her, she cover her food up with anything, including dirt and grass, and not eat it. I'm a terrible dog owner, I know, but what I ended up having to do was buy her McDonald's hamburgers because it was all she'd eat.

Anytime we'd made a stop she'd hop out and run around. I think she did enjoy that part of the trip. This particular photo is actually in Homer (the first part of my trip that I took with Vicki). Lola loves to chase things- birds, chipmunks, kids, invisible beings...

At rest stops people would often ask me if we took turns driving. :) I'd just tell them yes, I let her use a phone books so she could see over the steering wheel.

Lola's responsibility during the trip was to sleep, and sleep she did. She found all sorts of comfy little spots to curl up in. I slept in the back of my car, which was actually quite comfortable, at rest stops along the way. So Lola's job at night was to keep watch, and since she had plenty of sleep during the day, she did a great job holding down the fort at night. Next to me as a slept was a bottle of mace, sold to me with the lady saying, "This works great on bears and dudes." I felt safe.

One might think after reading my blogs that I'm a paranoid person, but I'd like to simply say it was a little intimidating to be in the middle of a completely unfamiliar place thousands of miles from things I was familiar with and people I knew, so I took extra precautions. Even the customs guy asked me if I was carrying mace when I told him I was traveling alone.

Camping and Nerves

With my car loaded up and Lola settled in we began our road trip of 3500 miles. The first day of the trip I made it about 60 miles into Canada. I stopped at the first campground I could find. It cost only $12 Canadian, which I thought was a pretty good deal, except for the fact I was in the middle of nowhere and had not seen a bank since I left Anchorage, meaning I had to pay with American dollars, and all I had was a 20... so in the end it didn't turn out to be such a steal. (I had to pay in an envelope.) The campground was beautiful, the calm lake reflected the mountains, the birds chirped, and there wasn't a human sound (except for the beating of my heart, which could have been heard in Wisconsin) for what seemed like hundreds of miles away


There were two other campsites being used, both were motor homes. I didn't see a single soul the entire time and it was eerily quiet. I was afraid to even call Lola's name out loud for fear of disturbing nature's silence.

Before I left on the trip, people kept saying things to me like, "I can't believe you're going alone," "Be sure you have mace, there are a lot of crazy people out there," and "Watch out for bears." All of these are worthy precautions, but for me they just scared the hell out of me. So as I slept in my tent, unable to see anything outside, every little noise made me jump. Lola was uneasy too; if she heard something (or thought she heard something), she barked and her bark, piercing the infinite silence, tied the knot even tighter in my stomach. My heart raced the whole night, I was even trying in vain to practice Yogic breathing to calm myself down. Needless to say, after waking up at 4:30 am (since the sun really only set for a couple of hours) from a night of restless sleep and terrifying dreams, I hit the road with the decision not to camp again while on this trip.

"I have been here, this land is a part of me now"

reflections first. pictures later.

After six days in my car, driving from Alaska to Minnesota, I arrived home yesterday morning. The trip wasn't as I had expected, with hiking, camping, fishing, and biking, basically because I'm too much of a wuss to do those things on my own. The first night of camping I was completely restless, afraid of every sound, wondering if it was a bear or a man or whatever. Lola was jumpy too.

But it was a disappointing trip either.

Yesterday afternoon, I took my bike down the road a few miles (and over about 50 hills) to sit on the shore of Perch Lake, a lake I haven't been to since I was probably seven. It's a small lake that doesn't allow motor boats, so as you can imagine, perfectly serene. It was here that I began to reflect over my cross-continent odyssey.

I drove over half the length of the North American continent and saw beauty that words scarce describe: infinite, snow-capped mountains, Caribbean-colored lakes and rives surrounded by more snowy peaks, steaming hot springs nestled into nature's bosom, the towering rocky cliffs of Banff shrouded in smoke from a nearby fire, wide open prairies lit only by the silver light of the moon, rich green fields existing in perfect equality with the pure blue of the sky, Earth's passion displayed in her firey sunsets over mountains, prairies, and inevitably the concrete city.

Through each new landscape I drove, I said, "I'm going to live here someday." Yeah right, I'd have to live until 200 to make that possible. With the limitless time I had to think in my car, I came up with a list of all the things I want to do. Here's an abbreviated list:
::own a ranch out west- with horses and dogs and chickens and everything else
::live in rural hawaii, learn how to surf, and get around on a horse
::have an urban job and a city life
::live off the grid in a house I built with my own hands
::travel, teach English in remote corners of the world (only because that's the most convinient job in a foreign country)
::join the Peace Corp
::buy a house and live close to home to be near my family and friends and watch my nephew grow up
::have a family in any or all of these places

But honestly, all these dreams aside, I love where I'm at and what I'm doing. I suppose I'll be here (in Alaska) until I find and feel that it's time to move on.

The most content I'd been since my road trip started was the hour I spent sitting at Perch Lake, reflecting on my journey and life in general. Here's what I'll take away from the entire experience: We can search the world over looking for beauty and for life, but really it's right here, out the back door, we need only to recognize it and throw ourselves into it.

break up

the river is finally melting. finally! although, for the first time since i've been here, i wish it'd just wait til i was gone. it makes getting out really challenging. anyway, for the exciting part...

this morning i saw a family going to the other side (a mile or so down the river) in their boat. yes, there's still ice on the river, but there are significant open spots. so with their paddle in hand, they made their way to akula.

big deal, right?

well, in the same day, i had a student come to school from the other side. when i asked him how he came, he said, "snowmachine." so on the same day, on the same river, people are using boats and snowmachines. insane. perhaps i'm just a silly kassaq though, who still knows very little about life out here.

culinary endeavors

This week I had all sorts of culinary fun. I had my fourth grade writing class over to make akutaq, or eskimo icecream. The main ingredients include Crisco, smooshed and gooshed until its creamy, sugar, and hand-picked berries from the tundra.
My second native food adventure was the plucking of two geese. Sonya came over to help, but oddly enough, I was the expert since I had plucked a goose once before. It took us about an hour to pluck and prepare one of the geese, but the dinner that followed was really quite exquisit.

Sonya recently made akutaq with her class too, so we took our knowledge of akutaq making, to make our own batch. It was okay, I've definitely had better.
The finished product, our very own "native" meal: akutaq and baked goose with potatos and oninons
And finally, I must share this last picture. It an attempt to roast almonds, I really roasted them. I completely forgot I had them in the oven on broil, until a lovely cloud of smoke took over my kitchen. I couldn't help but laugh. They sure look pretty at least.

wow.

Browsing through my pictures today, I realized that in my class of 8 fourth graders, three of them are left-handed! Holy moly! In all the rest of my classes, 5th-12th, I can't think of even one who's a lefty. That's incredible. According to Yahoo! answers, 10% of the world is left-handed, it's pretty sweet that I ended up with class that has 38% lefties! Perhaps this is why they're such a hyper handful. Maybe they'll grow up the be the creative bunch of the village.

Desks

Desks
A stroll around my classroom, examining the desks, leaves me wondering

“Martha Mae Keene”
Would she be proud to see her name scribble atop this student’s workplace?

“Harry Berlin”
Is he incriminating himself?

a deeply engraved chasm
Was he practicing his thrilling geography terms: valley, gorge, crevass?

“Alexie Bee”
Yet another self-incriminator?

“Kathleen”
A grauduate of five years prior, come back to leave her mark?

“KATHY KALILA”
Who is this?

“WASS EVON”
His own handwriting, a certain self-incrimination, why?

“hurting”
Do you want me to know?

35 ominously familiar cuts
Better the desk

and lastly, a rare juxtaposition
the cross in all its glory, radiating hollowed beams of joy across the desk
Is this what Christ had intended?

morning

the sun rises early now
even before me
shining its spring warmth on my face as I sleep
I crack open the window
and wrap my white down comforter around my body
for ten more minutes
cool air tingles my exposed skin
like an early camp morning
I stay in bed
listening to the silent, sleeping world outside my window
cool air fills my lungs and reaches down into all my limbs
this is spring